Frontispiece: On a freeway, Michelangelo is facing down a
tornado, complete with a cow sucked straight from a dairy farm. The sight reminds Mikey about how much he
hates “Got Milk?” ads, because they’re unfair to low income families who cannot
afford milk. He also hates how unhealthy
beef is due to qualities such as mad cow disease and bovine growth hormones. All this cattle talk also reminds him of a
story…

In Moo Mesa, Generic Native American Stereotype Jose Rey
is busy telling the story of creation to a school of kids (they’re all
anthropomorphic cows, by the way). Rey
explains that in the beginning, there was only the Great Turtle and his animal
friends, swimming in an endless ocean.
Then a comet came out of the sky carrying a beautiful girl and landed in
the ocean. The Great Turtle asked that
soil be brought up from the ocean floor and placed on his back so that the girl
could have a land to live on. The soil
grew and became the Earth, now held up forever by the Great Turtle.

The story is interrupted by the youngster Cody Calf, who
has terrible news: Sheriff Terrorbull
invaded the Sacred Cave and stole the Crystal Shard (a piece of the comet that
created the Earth). The C.O.W.-Boys
(Marshal Moo Montana, the Dakota Dude and the Cowlorado Kid) tried to stop him,
but he escaped through a magical door.
The C.O.W.-Boys gave chase and vanished.
Jose Rey uses his mystical third eye to begin searching the Astral Plane
for wherever the C.O.W.-Boys might have gone.

Turns out they’re in Manhattan. The bovines are bewildered by this strange
city (and displeased with the light pollution and lack of flora), but decide to
continue their pursuit of Terrorbull before he can cause too much trouble. They follow the sound of an alarm to a
jewelry store which has just been robbed and figure they’re on Terrorbull’s
trail. The police mistake the
C.O.W.-Boys for the thieves, however, and give chase. The cattle are chased into a blind alley, but
Michelangelo surprises them from a manhole.
He invites the C.O.W.-Boys to join him in the sewer before the police
catch up.

Following Mikey to the lair, both groups fill the other
in on their origins and situation. As
Raph fights a sudden craving for burgers, Donnie figures he might be able to
get a bead on Terrorbull with his police scanner. The police band mentions a gang of cow-men
robbing the Gold Reserve and the TMNT and C.O.W.-Boys head out.

Arriving at the Gold Reserve, they spot a dozen
Terrorbull clones shooting it out with the police. Montana figures the fiend used the Crystal
Shard to create magic duplicates of himself.
The Turtles, Dakota and Cowlorado keep the Terrorbull clones (and
police) busy while Montana sneaks into the Gold Reserve to take out the genuine
article.

Inside, Montana finds Terrorbull raiding the gold vaults
and using the magic doorways to stash his horde in his hideaway back in Moo
Mesa. The two do battle, while outside,
the Turtles and the C.O.W.-Boys commandeer some police horses to round up the
Terrorbull clones and lasso them. With
that out of the way, Mikey hurries to help Montana knockout Terrorbull. With the Crystal Shard now out of villainous
hands, all the clones vanish.

The Turtles and the C.O.W.-Boys carry the hog-tied
Terrorbull back to the lair where they find Splinter and Jose Rey communicating
via the Astral Plane. Jose Rey helps
Montana use the Crystal Shard to open a doorway back to Moo Mesa and the
C.O.W.-Boys bid farewell.

Epilogue: The
C.O.W.-Boys return the Crystal Shard to the Sacred Cave and with a job well
done, decide to head down to the Tumbleweed Saloon for some sarsaparillas and
turtle soup (though they’re not proud of the latter). At the schoolhouse, Jose Rey tells the kids
all about how the four Great Turtles saved the Crystal Shard. One of the kids says that he thought there
was only one Great Turtle. Rey says
that, at least for the day, there are now four.

*As for where this one goes in the timeline, Splinter threatens to ground Raphael after he makes a comment about hamburgers, meaning the Turtles still have to be relatively young. Since they're living in the sewer lair, that would have to put this sometime after TMNT (Vol. 1) #21.

*In case you don’t remember, the Wild West C.O.W. Boys of Moo Mesa were characters created by Mirage staffer Ryan Brown and his father
Bob Brown. They had a short-lived
cartoon, comic series and toyline which, according to the opening editorial, were much more popular in Latin American
countries than in the US.

*This issue featured a contest from Steve Murphy
challenging readers to name the source of every literary quote he included
throughout the letters page. Winner
would receive the Eric Talbot letters page artwork from Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #20. The more difficult challenge
would be to read through all of Murphy’s letter responses without gagging,
rolling your eyes or falling asleep. I
failed on all three counts.

Review:

Wow, that sure was some fanfiction-quality stuff, wasn’t
it? A deus ex machina to bring the two
groups together, a no-questions-asked alliance and a thoroughly lackluster
resolution (Montana punches Terrorbull and that’s the end of that). Honestly, this is a really lousy story and
the only attraction is seeing the TMNT and the C.O.W.-Boys crossing over (and
Brizuela’s art). But are there really
that many Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa fans out there to even warrant much
excitement over this crossover?

I recall the C.O.W.-Boys from back in the day,
but it was just one cartoon in a repulsive glut of anthropomorphic animal
action shows churned out to cash-in on the popularity of Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles. The Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of
Moo Mesa left about as big an impact on me as the Biker Mice from Mars. It came in to piggyback on a fad while the
iron was hot then vanished just as quickly.
26 episodes total. That’s
it. I mean, seriously, guys; Street Sharks and Extreme Dinosaurs lasted
longer than that (and their crossover was better, God help us all).

But I guess what separates Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo
Mesa from all the other TMNT wannabes was that this was a TMNT wannabe created
by a Mirage staffer. So that awards it a
little extra mileage, I guess.

What bums me out is that Ryan Brown has no credit in this
issue beyond plotting the story (with two other people). It might have been interesting to see the creator return to his creations after a decade, but he didn’t write the script or draw the issue
or anything. Instead, go-to-guy Steve
Murphy handles the writing side of things and I already covered how uninspired
the whole story was. Seriously,
Michelangelo just pops his head out of a random manhole in New York, sees the
C.O.W.-Boys running from the cops and instantly thinks “they must be good guys;
I should invite them to our secret lair immediately!”

At least Murphy keeps his jacking off to Native American culture to
a minimum and shows the restraint to sprinkle in only a couple of environmental messages. Well, except for the frontispiece and Michelangelo's unsolicited rant about the dairy and beef industries. That was nothing but Murphy using the Turtle as his own personal mouthpiece.

I dunno, I guess I’m being a jerk in this review. I’m sorry.
Wild West C.O.W.-Boys has its fans (apparently they’re all in Latin
America; you know, like that friend of yours who insists he has a girlfriend, but she lives in Canada) and I imagine they got a
kick out of seeing their thoroughly dead obsession resurrected for an
inexplicable comic book crossover. And
when there hadn’t been any C.O.W.-Boys material in 12 years when this issue
came out, I doubt they were feeling especially picky. But the story is awful and the characters
have absolutely no personality whatsoever (Montana is the leader, Dakota and Cowlorado are The Other Guys).
All this thing has going for it is some wonderful art by Dario Brizuela
and a slew of cow puns. On second
thought, scratch that second compliment; those puns were excruciating.

If this had been a one-off, it would have been harmless
enough. But we got three more issues of
this shit, for some reason.

Grade: D (as in, “Dakota Dude was the only one whose
voice I remembered, but that's because he sounded like redneck Nega Duck”.)

5 comments:

Well, Kay Lenz did voicework for the Moo Mesa cartoon, which is the one of the few times she ever did any, so Moo Mesa has that going for it.

"The more difficult challenge would be to read through all of Murphy’s letter responses without gagging, rolling your eyes or falling asleep. I failed on all three counts."

Oh, snap, Mark! Heh. But I don't disagree, either. Anymore, when I finally read Volume 4 in its entirety, last year, I was more interested in just the letter columns and "what lulz will Laird and Murphy get into, today." Reminds me of how funny and wacky the Ultra Game Players mag used to be in the 90's, before it died. And sadly, more entertaining than most of Volume 4. (Including the dialogue issues you mentioned in your Volume 2 reviews. Boy, you're right on the mark -- yeah, made a pun -- on that.)

As for Moo Mesa, yes, it would have been nice to see Brown in writing action, again. Mostly, as much of what we grew up with the late 80's fare is because of him (and everyone else, too, yes). Oh, well, at least, he got to use Moo Mesa before the Viacom buyout and Tales had to wrap up quick.

I actually only know Bob Brown's name because it was mentioned in this issue's opening editorial.

And from the looks of it, Moo Mesa is an alternate universe, as later issues in the crossover arc deal with the multiverse. So yeah, I guess it's like Usagi's world, being both another dimension and another time altogether.

Being from Argentina i can vaguely remember watching the Moo Mesa show (meaning, i didn´t?), but i sure played the heck out of the arcade, that's what got me to know the characters; but didn't care too much for the show. i remember watching "the adventures of t-rex" much more than the cowboys (yeah!). as for the toys, i don't even recall seeying them at stores. but it's just what i remember.